


Through The Fog

by chokingonwhys



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Bad middle earth cryptids, Crack, Gen, Middle Earth Cryptids, Swamp Thing!Caranthir, as promised
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-05-14 00:34:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19262362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chokingonwhys/pseuds/chokingonwhys
Summary: In Thargelion, during the years of the Long Peace, a lonely fisherman sees something he shouldn't.





	Through The Fog

**Author's Note:**

> Absolute crack.

Caumion crouched behind his boat as it sat at the edge of Lake Helevorn, gasping and panting as quietly as he could as mud soaked his pant legs. He wasn't thinking straight. He couldn't be. He was hallucinating. He was asleep in his boat, drifting into the marsh south of his little cove. He was awake in the boat, and had been momentarily dazzled by reflected starlight glimmering in the early evening's mist. 

There was simply no way he was watching a man walk into the lake. An elegant man, his bearing lordly, in a brightly embroidered shirt. Directly into the lake. Caumion didn't know what he wore below the waist, as he was already hip-deep in the water by the time he caught sight of him. 

The man walked purposefully, slowly, smoothly, farther into the lake. He was chest deep now as he slid through the water, making not a ripple as his shoulders slipped below the surface. His glossy blue-black hair was nearly iridescent as it floated, swirling gently until it couldn't be distinguished from the water around it.

Caumion must have waited nearly an hour, shaking in the silent fog, before he grew brave enough to stand and pull his boat ashore. He'd be hungry tomorrow but there was certainly no fishing to be done tonight. He missed his wife, and her skill at stretching a handful of shellfish or a few bits of sausage into a nourishing soup, thick with boiled grain and seed pods. She'd been dead nearly twenty years. 

Sometimes she'd claimed she saw a hulking creature, damp and shaggy as though covered in water-weeds, arising from the lake to shamble quietly through the night. It was peaceful, she insisted, though once she was convinced she'd seen it rip an orc in half. He'd called them paranoid fancies and poked fun at her. After a while she'd stopped mentioning it.

He would never tell anyone what he'd witnessed, of course.

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'ed - if you see any obvious oopses, please let me know! If you can tell me the reference here to Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan saga, I'll write you a proper (100-words) drabble, with no restrictions, in the fandom of your choice. 
> 
> I'm mywoesaregranular on Tumblr ♥


End file.
